Children in Victorian society Essay

Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812. He lived a happy childhood. Everything was fine until 1824 when Dickens was 12 his father, John Dickens was sent to Marshalsea prison for debt. Dickens was put to work in the Warners blacking factory. When John Dickens left prison Dickens was told by his mother to stay on working at the factory. He found working there a humiliating experience but the good thing is it inspired much of his fiction in later life. Charles Dickens wrote ‘A Christmas Carol’ as a warning to London. London at the time was much divided, it was split into the poor and rich living, and there was no middle class. The rich would be VERY rich, would own masses of land, they would have extravagant clothes and foods with servants serving them their marvellous foods. Whereas the poor was VERY poor! The vast majority would be homeless, probably scavenge for food and all that they owned would be the clothes that they had on. The poor would be living on very dirty streets that were filled with disease and famine. On page 69 we get to see how bad these streets are as Dickens gives us a graphic detail of them. He describes the alleys and arches as cesspools. Cesspools were pits at the end of some (most) streets where all waste products were dumped – including human waste! This paragraph in the novel really shows us as the audience just how bad London was at the time. The warning was that: ‘If the children of today keep on growing up like they are, uneducated and neglected, the outlook for this country and its nation is a very bad one ‘ His very famous play ‘A Christmas Carol’ written in 1842 showed a great reflection of London society e. g. we had the poor and the rich – Scrooge (the main character) and tiny Tim (a disabled poor child. ) The character of scrooge was a very cold and lonely one. We can relate Scrooge to Dickens because scrooge had spent many Christmas’s alone at boarding school just like Dickens had at the factory. The boarding schools were very unpleasant places; they were lonely and very strict! Parents would send their children to them to get them out of the way until they were old enough to work; children were treated very badly in Dickens’ time. On pages 26 – 29 Dickens uses pathetic fallacy to describe Scrooge’s boarding school in his novel. Pathetic fallacy uses surroundings to create images of feelings. Dull red brick tells me that this is place is dull, boring and not the best of places to be. The whole passage uses different images to show us how truly bad this place is. He describes the place as damp, mossy, dreary – all these words are negative points. This shows us how depressing it must have been on the students e. g. Scrooge. The boarding school has had a dramatic impact in Scrooges life and has made Scrooge the way he is! His personality reflects the description of the school – the cold/upsetting environment has left Scrooge with a cold/icy personality. Dickens uses three ghosts to tell the story they show us the past, present and future of Scrooges life. The 1st ghost – Past This ghost takes us back to Scrooges time at boarding school, it shows him alone and neglected as other children go home for Christmas with their warm, loving families. Scrooge is described as a solitary child neglected by his friends (pg 26. ) The ghost also shows that after Scrooge leaves school he is very mean and because he is very lonely his only ‘friend’ is his money. We can see this in a scene with his girlfriend as he has to decide love of money, he chooses money and once again he is alone. The 2nd ghost – present This ghost introduces us to the Cratchit family waiting for Bob Cratchit and tiny Tim to get back from church. Tiny Tim is a young boy, he is very ill and likely to die soon, and this is all due to poverty not neglect because he has a very caring family! Tiny Tim is physically crippled and we see Scrooge as emotionally crippled from his childhood. The ghost then shows some of Scrooges family having a Christmas celebration without him. They are playing a guessing/description game where one person thinks of something and others have to guess what it is or who it is by asking questions. The game starts with someone describing this person as a savage animal living in London. Someone guesses it as ‘Uncle Scrooge’ He shows no emotion towards this and doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him. The ghost finally shows Scrooge two children, a boy and a girl. The boy represents ignorance and the girl represents want. Dickens sees the boy as the one to be scared of, he uses the boy to tell us that with the lack of education the boy will turn out much worse than the girl of want (poverty. ) When we are first introduced to the children, Dickens describes them as wretched objects, frightful, hideous, and miserable. From this I get the idea that Dickens is confused about what he wants to portray by these characters. Dickens then describes them as yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostate too. He has now decided to portray both these children as frighteningly scary. These children really bring up dickens’ massage of a poor future The last ghost – future This ghost shows Scrooge some disturbing images in this stave, the stave starts off with people talking about a man who has died but people are quite happy about his death. They then see other people talking about what they have stolen from this dead man, just to get some money. Somebody has even stolen the sheets he was lying on. This shows that nobody really cares about the man that has died! This ghost shows Scrooge the Cratchit family again but they are no longer happy and cheery this is because Tiny Tim has passed away due to the poverty. Finally the ghost shows Scrooge a gravestone with his name on it, this when Scrooge realises that nobody does car about him and that he is alone. He has caused the suffering of the Cratchit’s with his evil greedy ways! Scrooge w.akes up on Christmas day and changes who he is and helps Tiny Tim and the Cratchit’s. I think that this story works very well because look where we are today, there is no longer much harsh poverty and all children are now educated in England. So I believe that this novel could have played a huge part in this transformation because I woke people up to just how bad things were going to be. Charles Dickens passed away suddenly in 1870 without finishing his final novel ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood’